B.C. Supreme Court case asks: Can publicly-funded faith-based hospitals and care homes refuse to allow MAID on their premises? A personal story raises some questions

When I heard about the B.C. Supreme Court case about whether a publicly funded faith-based hospital should be allowed to deny patients onsite Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID), my thoughts went back seven years to my friend John Regehr. 

At that time, Regehr, 93, was a patient at Concordia Hospital, a faith-based hospital in Winnipeg that was started by Mennonites in 1928. Like the Catholic hospital at the heart of the B.C. court case, it doesn’t permit MAID on its premises. 

At the age of 90, Regehr had life-saving heart surgery. A few months later, he fell in his apartment and broke his hip. He recovered, but over the next few years there were more falls and more trips to emergency. 

In October of 2019, he was admitted to Concordia Hospital with severe pain in his hip. It was clear to him he would never be able to go back home again. 

According to his son, Rennie, he didn’t want to lie in bed for the rest of his life, “waiting for death to come.” But when he learned he was eligible for MAID, “his face lit up.” 

Since Concordia doesn’t allow the procedure, due to its beliefs, Regehr was moved by ambulance to Health Sciences Centre on Nov. 7. There, in the presence of this family, he died. 

Looking back on that experience, Rennie said the experience of being transferred “was hurtful” to his father on two levels. First, because he had committed so much of his time and energy to the Mennonite church in Canada, only to feel they had turned, as he was abandoned by them in his greatest moment of need. Second, because riding in the back of an ambulance to the hospital where he could have MAID was extremely uncomfortable and cold. 

For Rennie, Concordia’s decision felt like dogma and doctrine were more important than his father, and for others who find themselves in similar situations. “Can those doctrines and dogmas be set aside to tend to the person?” he asked. “I wish for more pastoral responses.”

Read more about this issue, which is pertinent not just for faith-based hospitals but also for faith-based personal care homes, in my Free Press column.

Photo above: Gaye O'Neill, mother of Samantha O'Neill (at the heart of the case, in picture, left), talks to the media at B.C. Supreme Court before the lawsuit challenging forced MAID transfers at St. Paul's Hospital. From the Winnipeg Free Press.